


will you take the pain

by Blake



Series: 30 Days of Depeche Mode Bagginshield ficlets [16]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Injured Thorin Oakenshield, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Slow Burn, Sub Thorin Oakenshield, at least that's a tag, fussy virgo Bilbo, post-A GOOD OMEN, post-An Unexpected Journey, post-HUG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25606711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: Accepting help is not the same as asking for it.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Series: 30 Days of Depeche Mode Bagginshield ficlets [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705147
Comments: 13
Kudos: 67





	will you take the pain

**Author's Note:**

> My wife wants a lot of hurt/comfort content about the time between the 1st and 2nd movie, where clearly enough time passes for Thorin's wounds to mostly heal. This is my first contribution to the cause. Thank you for reading!

For the first week after the warg bite, Thorin is not allowed to move much. He is forced to swallow herbs and draughts on Oin’s prescribed schedule. The company give him stern looks when he tries to convince them they’re wasting precious time by waiting for him to heal. Gandalf assures him that they are in no immediate danger of being found by their pursuers, and so Thorin rests. Sleep is easier to find than usual when the pain of impact runs bone-deep.

But once they start moving East again, there are no more demands for him to stop and rest, or slow his pace, or change his bandages—except for those demands made by the hobbit.

“Don’t you think Oin should take a look at that?” At first, Bilbo asks questions such as these. It warms the ice shard of pain needling into Thorin’s chest from the deep bite of the beast.

“Oin?” Thorin asks, referring the question to him with a nod. He smiles at Bilbo all the while, amused, or perhaps touched—yes, definitely touched, as he has been since the moment he saw the halfling come running to his defense and slay an orc with his small glowing blade.

When the question finally makes its way through Oin’s trumpet, an odd, but not unexpected thing happens, and it happens every time: Thorin is looked to for the answer. If it’s not Oin giving him an inquisitive look, trying to decipher what Thorin wants the answer to be, then it’s some others of the company laughing off Bilbo’s worry by loudly praising Thorin’s hardiness. It seems that they believe their leader will ask for a break when he needs one. It seems that they believe their leader needs no breaks.

“He’s built of tougher stuff even than you, laddie,” Balin tells Bilbo with a playful wink one time. The joviality does lighten his heart, but it also stings. More than anything, it is inevitable. He makes no great effort to play the part of someone unwilling to admit his own weakness, but that perception of him remains. He does not resent it greatly. It has been his constant companion since his youth. He appears capable of taking on others' problems and ignoring his own, and so he does just that.

There’s something utterly charming about the way Bilbo looks at him while deciding whether or not to press the issue. Dark blue eyes waver back and forth across Thorin’s bruised face, seeming to search for warning signs that Thorin will be angry with him. He bites the inside of his lip, but he rarely succeeds in fully biting back his words.

Indeed, his words grow more biting as the days pass by.

“Oh, this is absurd!” Thorin flinches, not at the exclamation, but at the small hand fitted against the back of his coat, pressing in tight as if Bilbo could stand him more upright. “Your back is completely stiff. You can hardly walk in a straight line. Thorin.” Those deep eyes look into Thorin’s, riveting him to the spot. “You _need_ to change this wound dressing and rest.”

Thorin changes his wound dressing, and rests.

“Thorin, what have you done to your face?” This time, everyone is already resting, seated around a fire for warmth on the foothill slopes. Bilbo must have been watching him in the firelight, though, for he bustles across the center of the circle to tend to the scab on Thorin’s brow that has rent and started bleeding yet again. “Honestly. You must let me clean this.”

Thorin lets him clean it.

By the end of another week, Bilbo’s words have softened. So has the worst of the pain, and so has Thorin’s heart. “Thorin,” Bilbo says with a pleading look. He can ask for anything with just a look, now, and Thorin will know what he’s asking, and will give it to him.

Thorin tells the company to stop, saving Bilbo the trouble of berating him in front of everyone, and stepping aside to a strand of trees so that Bilbo may berate him in private. “Why didn’t you tell me the inflammation was worse?” Bilbo pushes at Thorin’s coat. The familiarity of the gesture steals Thorin’s breath. The entitlement of it. To think that someone could ever feel entitled to take care of him makes Thorin’s blood warm in his veins.

Swallowing down the unreasonable lump in his throat, Thorin untucks his clothes and moves them up to expose his side and back, this same patch of broken skin he’s shown Bilbo a dozen times over the past weeks. He watches his own breaths where they expand, too conscious of the signs that might betray how much he wants Bilbo to never stop looking at him.

“A plague on dwarves and their stiff necks,” Bilbo mutters, sounding almost fond. His cool fingers inspect the deepest puncture wound in his side, then travel over to the lowest broken rib. Thorin shivers in pain and delight. The bruising wants the relief of a healing touch, yet repels the slightest pressure at the same time. “You would rather die of an infected wound than ask for help.”

“I am letting you help me, and without complaint, am I not?” Thorin attempts a smile, but he’s afraid his heart is showing in it. Of all the impossible things to wish for on a dangerous journey with the destiny of his people at stake, the least practical—or most selfish—is the wondrous thought of what it might be like to become accustomed to someone taking care of him, expecting his vulnerabilities, exacting them, and soothing their sting.

Yet here he is, growing more and more accustomed to it every day, looking forward to Bilbo’s fussing, and his insults, and the safe touch of his life-saving hands. Here Bilbo is, day after day, caring if he lives or dies, and replacing the infected blood in Thorin’s veins with impractical, selfish hope.

“Accepting help is _not_ the same as asking for it,” Bilbo reproaches.

There’s painful, wet pressure diving deep into his spine where Bilbo presses a cloth to his wound. He sees red, his body makes itself at home in his mind, and he says, “I do my best when receiving what I am given.” He thinks he meant that to be an overarching statement about his role in the world, and not as a suggestion about courtship or sex or even medicinal care, but blinded by pain, he can hardly decipher the difference amongst those things. Furthermore, attempting to clarify would only make it worse. So, when the red clears, he lets himself smile the way his heart badly, impractically, selfishly wants to.

Bilbo meets his eyes for just long enough to steal Thorin’s breath, and then looks down at the work his hands are doing to wrap Thorin’s side again. Him looking down is a sign that he’s thinking, or doesn’t know what to say, for he always has something to say unless he has not figured it out yet. Which isn’t too often. He’s very clever. Thorin has observed him enough to know all these things. Clever Bilbo is probably moments away from deciphering all of what that means.

Without lifting his chin, Bilbo looks up at him again. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask for what you want every once in a while. I’m sure it never killed anyone.”

“Hm.” Thorin worries a sense of panic around in his mouth, swallowing and searching for answers against the backs of his teeth. He could not possibly have this conversation right now, not when he doesn’t even know what, exactly, he would ask for if he felt he could ask at all. _Keep fussing over me and putting me in my place and hurting me to heal me, until the end of time. Make me be selfish. Show me a new practicality. Let me give you the whole world, or whatever meager prize I can scrape together. Let me look into your eyes until I can see, for sure, that you want to share your world with me._

Bilbo finishes his work with a loud sigh and sets Thorin’s shirts back down. “Unlike infected wounds,” he says, “which have killed plenty of people.” His inflection is accusatory, but his tone falls just short of bitter sarcasm. His eyelashes shade his cheeks so prettily when his eyes are lowered.

“I am thankful that I will not be one of those plenty, at least not today.”

Bilbo makes a complacent noise at that, and he shrugs his small, sloped shoulders in that superior, indifferent way of his. “Nor tomorrow, nor the day after, nor so long as I keep my eye on you, Thorin Oakenshield.”

 _Let that be forever_ , Thorin wishes.


End file.
